Stories from Slatehttp://www.slate.com/all.fulltext.peter_singer.rss
Stories from SlateThe Trouble With Big Sugarhttp://www.slate.com/articles/business/project_syndicate/2013/11/coca_cola_announces_zero_tolerance_for_land_grabs_by_refineries_in_poor.html
<p>Sugar is sweet, but the ethics of its production are anything but appealing. “<a href="http://www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/bn-sugar-rush-land-supply-chains-food-beverage-companies-021013-en_1.pdf">Sugar Rush</a>” a recent report released by Oxfam International as part of its “<a href="http://www.behindthebrands.org/">Behind the Brands</a>” campaign, has shown that our use of sugar implicates us in land grabs that violate the rights of some of the world’s poorest communities. Better-informed and more ethical consumers could change this.</p>
<p>We are genetically programmed to like sweet things, and when people become more affluent, they consume more sugar. The resulting increase in sugar prices has led producers to seek more land on which to grow sugar cane.</p>
<p>It is no surprise that the poor lose when their interests conflict with those of the rich and powerful. The Oxfam report provides several examples of producers who have acquired land without the consent of the people who live on it, turning farmers into landless laborers. Here is one.</p>
<p>In the northeastern Brazilian state of Pernambuco, a group of fishing families had lived since 1914 on islands in the Sirinha&eacute;m River estuary. In 1998, the Usina Trapiche sugar refinery petitioned the state to take over the land. The islanders say that the refinery then followed up its petition by destroying their homes and small farms—and threatening further violence to those who did not leave.</p>
<p>As recently as last year, the fishing families say, employees of the refinery burned down homes that had been rebuilt. Trapiche moved the families to a nearby town, where they gained access to electricity, water, sanitation, and schooling, but if they want to continue to fish, they have to travel a long distance. Many of them are still seeking to return to the islands.</p>
<p>Both Coca-Cola and PepsiCo use Usina Trapiche sugar in their products. Does that make them responsible for the wrongs done to the people whose land Trapiche is using to produce that sugar? In the 1990s, Nike tried to wash its hands of responsibility for the use of child labor and other unconscionable labor practices in the factories that produced its sneakers. That did not go down well with its customers, and in the end Nike decided to do the right thing, inspecting factories, tackling problems, and being transparent about its suppliers.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Likewise, McDonald’s initial response to criticism of its suppliers’ animal-welfare practices was to sue the activists who made the allegations. The company expected that its critics would give up. But when two of them, with nothing to lose, defended themselves in court, the result was the longest libel trial in British legal history—and a public-relations disaster for the corporate giant.</p>
<p>After the judge held that some of the activists’ claims were not defamatory, because they were true, McDonald’s began to accept responsibility for its suppliers’ practices. It has since become a much-needed force for improvement in the treatment of animals used for food in the United States.</p>
<p>More recently, the collapse of the Rana Plaza garment factory in Bangladesh earlier this year, which killed more than 1,000 people, posed a similar question for the garment industry. Associated British Foods, which is both a major sugar producer and the owner of the retail clothing chain Primark, took responsibility for its suppliers by signing up, along with 80 other clothing brands, to a legally binding building-safety agreement supported by trade unions and the Bangladeshi government.</p>
<p>What applies to the clothing industry should hold for the food industry, too—and not just for sugar, but for all food production. Oxfam is asking the 10 biggest food brands to show leadership by acknowledging their responsibility for land-rights violations involving their suppliers.</p>
<p>In particular, Oxfam wants these global companies to avoid buying from suppliers that have acquired land from small-scale food producers without these producers’ free, prior, and informed consent. Where land has already been acquired without such consent, and the acquisition is in dispute, Oxfam wants the corporations to insist on fair dispute-resolution procedures.<br /> </p>
<p>“Behind the Brands” includes a score sheet, ranking the Big 10 on a range of issues, including their impact on workers, water, land, women, and climate change. On land issues, Oxfam rates PepsiCo, and ABF either “poor” or “very poor.” Nestl&eacute; scores better, because its guidelines for suppliers—used for the sourcing of sugar, soy, palm oil, and other commodities—require that they obtain the free, prior, and informed consent of indigenous and local communities before acquiring land.</p>
<p>Nestl&eacute; was the first of the Big 10 to support this principle fully. Then, on Nov. 7, Coca-Cola responded to the Oxfam campaign by declaring that it would have “<a href="http://www.oxfam.org/en/grow/pressroom/pressrelease/2013-11-08/coca-cola-company-declares-zero-tolerance-land-grabs-supply-chain">zero tolerance</a>” for land grabbing by its suppliers and bottlers. Coca-Cola committed to disclosing the companies that supply it with sugar cane, soy, and palm oil, so that social, environmental, and human rights assessments can be conducted; it will also engage with Usina Trapiche regarding the conflict with the fishing families of the Sirinha&eacute;m River estuary.</p>
<p>Oxfam’s advocacy is raising the standards for the global food industry. If PepsiCo and ABF want us to regard them as ethical producers, they need to follow the lead of Nestl&eacute; and now Coca-Cola, and accept responsibility for their suppliers’ conduct toward some of the world’s poorest and most powerless people.</p>Sun, 24 Nov 2013 12:00:00 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/business/project_syndicate/2013/11/coca_cola_announces_zero_tolerance_for_land_grabs_by_refineries_in_poor.htmlPeter Singer2013-11-24T12:00:00ZSugar refineries trample the rights of the poor. A few organizations are trying to change things.BusinessWhat Big Sugar Can Do to Help the Poor100131124002agriculturesugarPeter SingerProject Syndicatehttp://www.slate.com/articles/business/project_syndicate/2013/11/coca_cola_announces_zero_tolerance_for_land_grabs_by_refineries_in_poor.htmlfalsefalsefalsePhoto by Romeo Gacad/AFP/Getty ImagesA sugar farmer in the Phillipines.Is the Shutdown the Founding Fathers’ Fault?http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/project_syndicate/2013/10/government_shutdown_it_s_all_the_founding_fathers_fault.html
<p>Americans are fond of speaking in reverential tones about “the wisdom of the Founding Fathers”—that is, the men who wrote the Constitution. But the manner in which the House of Representatives has been able to bring the government—or, at least, its non-essential services—to a halt is making the Founding Fathers look rather foolish.</p>
<p>The fundamental cause of the fiscal crisis lies in the Founding Fathers’ belief in the doctrine of the separation of powers. That doctrine has always been philosophically controversial.</p>
<p>Thomas Hobbes, writing during the English Civil War, opposed the separation of powers, believing that only a strong and unified central government could ensure peace. John Locke, for his part, was more concerned with curbing monarchical power and regarded the separation of legislative and executive powers as one way to do that.<br /> </p>
<p>Having fought against what they regarded as the tyranny of George III, the American revolutionaries wanted to ensure that no such tyranny could arise in the new nation that they were establishing. To do so, they wrote the doctrine of the separation of powers into its constitution.</p>
<p>As a result, neither the president nor Cabinet officials are members of the legislature, and they cannot be removed from office by a legislative majority. At the same time, the legislature controls the budget and the government’s ability to borrow. The potential for impasse is obvious.</p>
<p>We might think that the Founding Fathers deserve the credit for the fact that the U.S. government has never devolved into tyranny. But the same can be said of Britain’s government, despite the absence of a constitutional separation of powers between the legislature and the executive—indeed, despite the absence of a written constitution altogether.<br /> </p>
<p>Nor have former British colonies like Australia, New Zealand, and Canada become tyrannies. In contrast to the U.S., however, the prime minister and Cabinet officials in all of these countries are members of the legislature, and governments hold office only so long as they retain the confidence of a majority of the parliament’s lower house (or, in New Zealand, of its only house). If the legislature denies the executive the money that it needs to run the government, the government falls and is replaced by a new government, perhaps on a caretaker basis pending an early election.</p>
<p>Given the U.S. Constitution’s fundamental flaw, what seems improbable is not the current crisis, but the fact that such impasses between the legislature and the executive have not caused chaos more often. That is testimony to most U.S. legislators’ common sense and to their willingness to compromise in order to avoid doing serious harm to the country they serve—until now, that is.<br /> </p>
<p>Constitutional amendments must be ratified by three-quarters of the states, which means that at present there is no realistic prospect of changing the Constitution sufficiently to overcome the flaw that has made the current crisis possible. But a different factor that contributes to the hyperpartisan nature of U.S. politics today could be changed without amending the Constitution. We can best grasp this problem by asking why many members of the Republican Party who have voted in the House of Representatives to force the government to shut down are not worried that their tactics—which will undoubtedly harm many of their constituents—will fuel an electoral backlash.</p>
<p>The answer is that the districts from which House members are elected are gerrymandered to an extent that citizens of most other democracies would consider preposterous. This happens because responsibility for drawing the districts’ boundaries generally falls to state legislatures, where the party in control is free to draw them to its own advantage. Nowadays, the Republicans control most state legislatures, enabling them to win a majority of House seats despite lacking the support of a majority of the American public; in the 2012 congressional election, Democratic Party candidates countrywide received 1.4 percent more votes than Republicans.<br /> </p>
<p>The gerrymandering of &nbsp;congressional districts means more than that the House of Representatives is not representative of the population as a whole; it also means that many incumbents are in no danger of losing their seat in an election. The real danger—especially in the Republican Party—comes largely from those who are further to the right than the incumbent. To be seen as a moderate is to risk defeat, not at the hands of voters as a whole, but in the Republican Party’s nomination contests, in which high turnout among the party’s most fervently committed members gives them disproportionate influence over outcomes.</p>
<p>One could imagine cool heads in both parties cutting a deal based on an understanding that it is in America’s interest to establish an impartial commission to draw fair boundaries for all House electoral districts. There is no constitutional barrier to such an arrangement. In America’s current environment of extreme political polarization, however, such an outcome is almost as unlikely as a constitutional amendment preventing the House of Representatives from denying the government the funds that it needs to govern.</p>
<p><em><strong>This article was originally published by&nbsp;Project Syndicate.&nbsp;For more from&nbsp;Project Syndicate,&nbsp;visit their&nbsp;<a href="http://www.project-syndicate.org/">Web site</a>&nbsp;and follow them on&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/#%21/ProSyn">Twitter</a>&nbsp;or&nbsp;<a href="http://www.facebook.com/projectsyndicate">Facebook</a></strong></em><em>.</em></p>Sun, 06 Oct 2013 11:15:00 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/project_syndicate/2013/10/government_shutdown_it_s_all_the_founding_fathers_fault.htmlPeter Singer2013-10-06T11:15:00ZAfter all, they gave us the separation of powers between Congress and the president.News and PoliticsIs the Shutdown the Founding Fathers’ Fault?100131006001government shutdownPeter SingerProject Syndicatehttp://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/project_syndicate/2013/10/government_shutdown_it_s_all_the_founding_fathers_fault.htmlfalsefalsefalsePhoto by Andrew Kelly/Getty ImagesThe shutdown? It's pretty much all the Founding Fathers' fault.The World Wide Web Should Actually Be Worldwidehttp://www.slate.com/articles/technology/project_syndicate/2013/09/mark_zuckerberg_the_facebook_founder_has_a_plan_to_bring_the_internet_to.html
<p>Fifty years ago, Martin Luther King dreamed of an America that would one day deliver on its promise of equality for all of its citizens, black as well as white. Today, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has a dream, too: he wants to provide Internet access to the world’s 5 billion people who do not now have it.</p>
<p>Zuckerberg’s vision may sound like a self-interested push to gain more Facebook users. But the world currently faces a growing technological divide, with implications for equality, liberty, and the right to pursue happiness that are no less momentous than the racial divide against which King preached.<br /> </p>
<p>Around the world, more than 2 billion people live in the Digital Age. They can access a vast universe of information, communicate at little or no cost with their friends and family, and connect with others with whom they can cooperate in new ways. The other 5 billion are still stuck in the Paper Age in which my generation grew up.</p>
<p>In those days, if you wanted to know something but did not own an expensive encyclopedia (or your encyclopedia was no longer sufficiently up-to-date), you had to go to a library and spend hours searching for what you needed. To contact friends or colleagues overseas, you had to write them a letter and wait at least two weeks for a reply. International phone calls were prohibitively expensive, and the idea of actually seeing someone while you talked to them was the stuff of science fiction.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.internet.org/">Internet.org</a>, a global partnership launched by Zuckerberg last month, plans to bring the those without Internet access into the Digital Age. The partnership consists of seven major information-technology companies, as well as nonprofit organizations and local communities. Knowing that you cannot ask people to choose between buying food and buying data, the partnership will seek new, less expensive means of connecting computers, more data-efficient software, and new business models.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Microsoft founder Bill Gates has suggested that Internet access is not a high priority for the poorest countries. It is more important, he says, to tackle problems like diarrhea and malaria. I have nothing but praise for Gates’ efforts to reduce the death toll from these diseases, which primarily affect the world’s poorest people. Yet his position seems curiously lacking in big-picture awareness of how the Internet could transform the lives of the very poor. For example, if farmers could use it to get more accurate predictions of favorable conditions for planting, or to obtain higher prices for their harvest, they would be better able to afford sanitation, so that their children do not get diarrhea, and bed nets to protect themselves and their families against malaria.</p>
<p>A friend working to provide family-planning advice to poor Kenyans recently told me that so many women were coming to the clinic that she could not spend more than five minutes with each. These women have only one source of advice, and one opportunity to get it, but if they had access to the Internet, the information could be there for them whenever they wanted it.</p>
<p>Moreover, online consultations would be possible, sparing women the need to travel to clinics. Internet access would also bypass the problem of illiteracy, building on the oral traditions that are strong in many rural cultures and enabling communities to create self-help groups and share their problems with peers in other villages.</p>
<p>What is true for family planning is true for a very wide range of topics, especially those that are difficult to speak about, like homosexuality and domestic violence. The Internet is helping people to understand that they are not alone, and that they can learn from others’ experience.</p>
<p>Enlarging our vision still more, it is not absurd to hope that putting the world’s poor online would result in connections between them and more affluent people, leading to more assistance. Research shows that people are more likely to donate to a charity helping the hungry if they are given a photo and told the name and age of a girl like those the charity is aiding. If a mere photo and a few identifying details can do that, what might Skyping with the person do?<br /> </p>
<p>Providing universal Internet access is a project on a scale similar to sequencing the human genome, and, like the human-genome project, it will raise new risks and sensitive ethical issues. Online scammers will have access to a new and perhaps more gullible audience. Breaches of copyright will become even more widespread than they are today (although they will cost the copyright owners very little, because the poor would be very unlikely to be able to buy books or other copyrighted material).</p>
<p>Moreover, the distinctiveness of local cultures may be eroded, which has both a good and a bad side, for such cultures can restrict freedom and deny equality of opportunity. On the whole, though, it is reasonable to expect that giving poor people access to knowledge and the possibility of connecting with people anywhere in the world will be socially transforming in a very positive way.</p>Sun, 15 Sep 2013 11:00:00 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/technology/project_syndicate/2013/09/mark_zuckerberg_the_facebook_founder_has_a_plan_to_bring_the_internet_to.htmlPeter Singer2013-09-15T11:00:00ZAnd Mark Zuckerberg has a plan.TechnologyMark Zuckerberg’s Plan to Bring the Internet to the Poor100130915001facebookinternetfacebookinternetPeter SingerProject Syndicatehttp://www.slate.com/articles/technology/project_syndicate/2013/09/mark_zuckerberg_the_facebook_founder_has_a_plan_to_bring_the_internet_to.htmlfalsefalsefalsePhoto by Steve Jennings/Getty Images for TechCrunch&nbsp;Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook attends TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2013 at San Francisco Design Center on Sept. 11, 2013We Need a War on Coalhttp://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/project_syndicate/2013/08/war_on_coal_we_need_to_leave_fossil_fuels_in_the_ground.html
<p>Earlier this year, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reached <a href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2013/05/130510-earth-co2-milestone-400-ppm/">400 parts per million</a>. The last time there was that much CO<sub>2</sub> in our atmosphere was 3 million years ago, when sea levels were 24 meters higher than they are today. Now sea levels are rising again. Last September, <a href="http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/reportcard/sea_ice.html">Arctic sea ice covered the smallest area ever recorded</a>. All but one of the <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/2012-temps.html">10 warmest years since 1880</a>, when global records began to be kept, have occurred in the 21st century.</p>
<p>Some climate scientists believe that 400 ppm of CO<sub>2</sub> in the atmosphere is already enough to take us past the tipping point at which we risk a climate catastrophe that will turn billions of people into refugees. They say that we need to get the amount of atmospheric CO<sub>2</sub> back down to 350 ppm. That figure lies behind the name taken by <a href="http://350.org/">350.org</a>, a grassroots movement with volunteers in 188 countries trying to solve the problem of climate change.</p>
<p>Other climate scientists are more optimistic: They argue that if we allow atmospheric CO<sub>2</sub> to rise to 450 ppm, a level associated with a temperature increase of 2 degrees Celsius, we have a 66.6 percent chance of avoiding catastrophe. That still leaves a one-in-three chance of catastrophe—worse odds than playing Russian roulette. And we are forecast to surpass 450 ppm by 2038.</p>
<p>One thing is clear: If we are wish not to be totally reckless with our planet’s climate, we cannot burn all the coal, oil, and natural gas that we have already located. About 80 percent of it—especially the coal, which emits the most CO<sub>2</sub> when burned—will have to stay in the ground.</p>
<p>In June, President Obama told students at Georgetown University that he refused to condemn them and their children and grandchildren to “<u>a</u> planet that’s beyond fixing<u>.</u>” Saying that climate change cannot wait for Congress to overcome its “partisan gridlock,” he announced measures using his executive power to limit CO<sub>2</sub> emissions, first from new fossil-fuel power plants, and then from existing ones.<br /> </p>
<p>Obama also called for an end to public financing of new coal plants overseas, unless they deploy carbon-capture technologies (which are not yet economically viable), or else there is, he said, “no other viable way for the poorest countries to generate electricity.”<br /> </p>
<p><a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/e2-wire/307571-white-house-adviser-war-on-coal-is-exactly-whats-needed">According to Daniel Schrag</a>, director of Harvard University’s Center for the Environment and a member of a presidential science panel that has helped to advise Obama on climate change, “Politically, the White House is hesitant to say they’re having a war on coal. On the other hand, a war on coal is exactly what’s needed.”</p>
<p>Schrag is right. His university, like mine and many others, has a plan to reduce its greenhouse-gas emissions. Yet most of them, including Schrag’s and mine, continue to invest part of their multibillion-dollar endowments in companies that extract and sell coal.<br /> </p>
<p>But pressure on educational institutions to stop investing in fossil fuels is beginning to build. Student groups have formed on many campuses, and a handful of colleges and universities have already pledged to end their investment in fossil fuels. Cities including San Francisco and Seattle have agreed to do the same.</p>
<p>Now financial institutions, too, are coming under fire for their involvement with fossil fuels. In June, I was part of a group of prominent Australians who signed an <a href="http://openletter.marketforces.org.au/">open letter</a> to the heads of the country’s biggest banks asking them to stop lending to new fossil-fuel extraction projects, and to sell their stakes in companies engaged in such activities.<br /> </p>
<p>Speaking at Harvard earlier this year, Al Gore <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/feb/08/al-gore-fossil-fuel-divestment">praised a student group</a> that was pushing the university to sell its investments in fossil-fuel companies, and compared their activities to the divestment campaign in the 1980s that helped to end South Africa’s racist apartheid policy.</p>
<p>How fair is that comparison? The dividing lines may be less sharp than they were with apartheid, but our continued high level of greenhouse-gas emissions protects the interests of one group of humans—mainly affluent people who are alive today—at the cost of others. (Compared with most of the world’s population, even the American and Australian coal miners who would lose their jobs if the industry shut down are affluent.) Our behavior disregards most of the world’s poor, and everyone who will live on this planet in centuries to come.</p>
<p>Worldwide, the poor leave a very small carbon footprint, but they will suffer the most from climate change. Many live in hot places that are getting even hotter, and hundreds of millions of them are subsistence farmers who depend on rainfall to grow their crops. Rainfall patterns will vary, and the Asian monsoon will become less reliable. Those who live on this planet in future centuries will live in a hotter world, with higher sea levels, less arable land, and more extreme hurricanes, droughts, and floods.<br /> </p>
<p>In these circumstances, to develop new coal projects is unethical, and to invest in them is to be complicit in this unethical activity. While this applies, to some extent, to all fossil fuels, the best way to begin to change our behavior is by reducing coal consumption. Replacing coal with natural gas does reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, even if natural gas itself is not sustainable in the long term. Right now, ending investment in the coal industry is the right thing to do.</p>
<p><strong><em>This article was originally published by&nbsp;Project Syndicate.&nbsp;For more from&nbsp;Project Syndicate,&nbsp;visit their&nbsp;<a href="http://www.project-syndicate.org/">Web site</a>&nbsp;and follow them on&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/#%21/ProSyn">Twitter</a>&nbsp;or&nbsp;<a href="http://www.facebook.com/projectsyndicate">Facebook</a></em></strong><em>.</em></p>Sun, 18 Aug 2013 11:45:00 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/project_syndicate/2013/08/war_on_coal_we_need_to_leave_fossil_fuels_in_the_ground.htmlPeter Singer2013-08-18T11:45:00ZIt’s wrong for affluent Westerners to inflict the damages of climate change on the world’s poor.Health and ScienceIt’s High Time We Declared War on Coal100130818002coalenvironmentcoalenvironmentPeter SingerProject Syndicatehttp://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/project_syndicate/2013/08/war_on_coal_we_need_to_leave_fossil_fuels_in_the_ground.htmlfalsefalsefalsePhoto by STR/AFP/Getty ImagesSmoke rising from a chimney at a coal chemical factory in Huaibei, east China's Anhui province.Who Deserves the 9/11 Cash Pile?http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/hey_wait_a_minute/2001/12/who_deserves_the_911_cash_pile.html
<p> An &quot;avalanche,&quot; a &quot;flood&quot;—these terms have been used to describe not natural disasters but the money flowing to victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. At the time of writing, the total given to public appeals has reached $1.3 billion. Of this, according to a <em>New York Times</em> survey, $353 million has been raised exclusively for the families of about 400 police officers, firefighters, and other uniformed personnel who died trying to save others. That comes to $880,000 for each family. Families of victims who were not in uniform will receive much less, because the remaining funds must be spread over a much larger number of people, including those who have lost their jobs because of the attacks.</p>
<p>Questions of justice immediately arise. At a New Jersey support meeting for the families of those killed on Sept. 11, a &quot;screaming match&quot; broke out when a widow of a Port Authority police officer argued that her family deserved more charity than other families because her husband had died saving others. That argument was hotly contested by the widow of a financial executive, who insisted that all casualties deserved equal treatment. The <em>New York Times </em>quoted Mary Ellen Salamone as saying that she was &quot;heartbroken about the inequities—that people could value the lives of those men more than they would value the lives of our men.&quot; </p>
<p>It makes sense for the community to reward the families of those who die while bravely trying to save others, for doing so both recognizes and encourages acts of great benefit to the community. This is not a matter of equity or distributive justice but sound social policy. How big the difference between the reward for these and the &quot;civilian&quot; victims ought to be is another question. It could be argued that the families of the firefighters killed would have been adequately provided for even if there had been no donations at all. Their spouses will receive New York state pensions equal to the lost salaries, and their children will be entitled to full scholarships to state universities. The federal government is giving an additional $250,000 to families of police officers and firefighters killed on duty. For families to receive close to a million dollars in cash on top of all that may well leave us thinking that something has gone awry.</p>
<p>As it happens, just as the terrorists were putting their criminal plans into practice, the United Nations Children's Fund was getting ready to issue its 2002 report, <em>The State of the World's Children</em>. (For a summary, see <a href="http://www.unicef.org/media/sowc02presskit/">this</a> page; click <a href="http://www.unicef.org/media/sowc02presskit/fullreport.htm">here</a> for the full report.)<em></em>According to the UNICEF report, released to the media on Sept. 13, more than 10 million children under 5 die each year from preventable causes such as malnutrition, unsafe water, and the lack of even the most basic health care. Since Sept. 11, 2001, was probably just another day for most of the world's desperately poor people, we can expect that more than 27,000 children under 5 died from these causes on that day. If we include humans of all ages dying from causes related to extreme poverty, the daily figure would easily pass 100,000. (Based on the estimate of 40 million deaths mentioned in <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/newsid_461000/461268.stm">President Clinton’s speech</a> of Sept. 29, 1999, on canceling the debts of the poorest nations.)</p>
<p>Such figures do not diminish the tragedy of Sept. 11, but they put the debate over how to divide up the largess among the families of uniformed and civilian victims of the attacks into perspective. They force us to ask: How can we justify giving such huge sums to the families of the firefighters and police when we do so little for people in other countries whose needs are much more desperate?</p>
<p>We often hear it said that &quot;America is the most generous nation on earth.&quot; But when it comes to foreign aid, America is the most stingy nation on earth. Many years ago, the United Nations set a target for development aid of 0.7 percent of Gross National Product. A handful of developed nations—Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden—meet or surpass this very modest target of giving 70 cents in every $100 dollars that their economy produces to the developing nations. Most nations fail to reach it, but no developed nation fails so miserably as the United States, which in 1999, the last year for which figures are available, gave 0.1 percent of GNP, or 10 cents in every $100, just one-seventh of the U.N. target. That is far less <em>in actual U.S. dollars</em> than Japan gives—about $9 billion for the United States, as compared with over $15 billion for Japan—although the U.S. economy is roughly twice the size of Japan's. And even that miserly figure isn't really aid to the most needy, as much of it is strategically targeted for political purposes. The largest single recipient of U.S. official development assistance is Egypt, followed by Bosnia and Herzegovina, which is tiny, but gets more aid from the United States than India does. (These figures come from the <a href="http://www.oecd.org/dac/htm/dacount1.htm">Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development</a>, as&nbsp;of July 23, 2001.) </p>
<p>Some will say it is misleading to focus on official aid, because the United States is a country that distrusts government more than most other nations do. If private aid sources were also included, would the United States not turn out to be more generous in its aid to other nations? Yes, a higher proportion of the total aid given by the United States is nongovernmental aid than is the case for other nations. But nongovernmental aid everywhere is dwarfed by government aid, and that is true in the United States too. So, adding in the nongovernmental aid is insufficient either to get the United States off the very bottom of the list of developed countries or to make the total sum given, in actual dollars, match the amount given by Japan. </p>
<p>Americans are fond of talking of their belief in human equality, but it seems that their circle of concern drops off sharply once it gets to the boundary of their own nation. The sums donated to the victims of Sept. 11 show this once again. We would be a better nation if our generosity was more closely related to need and less closely tied to whether someone is a fellow citizen, or a victim of terrorism, or even a hero.</p>Wed, 12 Dec 2001 21:11:00 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/hey_wait_a_minute/2001/12/who_deserves_the_911_cash_pile.htmlPeter Singer2001-12-12T21:11:00ZA moral philosopher on misplaced generosity.News and PoliticsWho deserves the 9/11 cash pile?2059690Peter SingerHey, Wait A Minutehttp://www.slate.com/id/2059690falsefalsefalse